From The First To The Last
by Stealthytanub
Summary: From the first floor to the hundredth. This is the story of Kazuko Kirigaya as she deals with hyper-realistic death games, homicidal players, ever encroaching death as comrades and friends die around her in their impossible goal of clearing the game and her slowly crumbling mental state. Every floor will be written. Warning: Death, Yuri. "What are you willing to sacrifice, Kiriko?"


This is an idea I've had for awhile, it started off with _Has anybody written about every floor from Floor 1 to 100?_ The answer to that is no, so I'm going to give it a show, with my own twist of course. Grimmdark ahead.

{Enemy NPC'S}  
 **{Enemy Boss}  
** [Player] - Inventory, items, sword skills, menu etc.  
 _'Thoughts'  
_ "Speech"

* * *

Today was a momentous occasion, it was a day that would be remembered in history as the _true_ start of the digital era, with all the good and bad that came with it. When man and machine grew ever closer until one could supplant the other. It was the release of a truly groundbreaking game called Sword Art Online.

Sword Art Online was a truly revolutionary game, coupled with the technology of the Nerve gear it could take a player and supplant one reality for another. During a Dive the brain's signals were intercepted and were rerouted into the machine where they could be interpreted in the form of data. Once the brain had been isolated from the body, the players minds were pulled into the virtual world where they would inhabit bodies of data that were their avatar's.

Sword Art Online itself was a masterpiece, there was to be hundreds of thousands of hours of content, space for millions of players in a single reality and the realism was of such quality that the Beta testers were issued warnings to perform occasional checks so that they could tell if they were in the real world or the virtual. This started after one player was heavily injured when he tried to drop from his window on the fifth floor of his apartment, something that was perfectly safe inside SAO towns but he didn't realize that he was in the real world rather than the virtual.

It was to be the crowning jewel of humanity, proof of how far technology had taken them and how much further it had left to advance. And it would have been, if it wasn't for the actions of one man. Kayaba Akihiko, the games creator, one of the driving forces behind the field of virtual reality and the owner of one of the biggest kill counts to ever be credited to a single man.

* * *

Kazuko Kirigaya opened her eyes to the slowly rising sun, not reacting even as the sun burned her tender eyes, still tired from lack of sleep. Letting herself lay slack for a moment she finally gave a slow blink as she slowly sat from her place on her bed, a weight on her head reminding her of the Nerve gear still residing there. She had fallen asleep inside the SAO Beta and set the program to let her wake up in the real world.

With slow and methodical movements she reached up and slid the heavy headset from her head, after a second of gentle tugging it came loose from her head where she let it drop to the bead, bouncing slightly as it did so. A solitary blink was all she needed to remove the last of the sleep from her eyes before she stood in a carefully measured movement, calculated to perfection without a single wasted twitch as she felt her muscles complaining about their disuse.

With the post-session stretching out of the way she carefully made her way across her room to the door and across the hall to the bathroom. When she slipped inside the first thing she was met with was her reflection, she stood at her full height, straight and tall. Her raven black hair was in the same condition she left it in, cascading like a waterfall down her back with slightly tangled sections from where the Nerve gear was touching her head for a prolonged duration. Next she looked to her face, her skin was pale, almost white, her cheekbones stood out sharply on her face as they led to her sharply pointed chin.

Overlooking all of this were her eyes, they sat there like twin orbs of stone. They were cold and hard, reflected nothing but a will of iron that was shadowed by the slight hollowness that they seemed to have, making you feel like you were standing before a mountain that could crush you at any time. But beyond that yawning chasm they retained that sparkle that would shine like diamonds in under the right lighting.

Taking her eyes off her reflection she made her way to the shower, where she spent the next ten minutes letting the hot water soak into her aching muscles and sooth the perpetual pain that she felt in even in her bones. After she had given her hair a quick rinse she dried herself before making her way back to her room, clad in nothing but her skin. Carefully working her way into a new set of clothes she made her way to her desk and as she sat down she reached over to a compartment and retried some food that she had prepared the day before had, she knew that she would have no time to make food today so she had gotten everything together beforehand.

Taking a bite that was slowly washed down with the water she kept in her room she quickly flicked between tabs on her computer, reading at a speed that would seen unbelievable to anyone who didn't live on their computer. After a quick skim she came across the article she was looking for, the announcement that today was the release of Sword Art Online. Skimming through the page she found that there was nothing new to her so with an internal sigh she closed the tab glancing at the clock as she stood from her seat.

Making her way back over to her bed she slowly laid down, sliding the Nerve gear back into its rightful place as she felt a slight tickle that was the microwaves powering up. Speaking the first words for over three days, her voice came out in a husky rasp "Link Start." She immediately felt her world fall away, her body going slack as her mind was rerouted through the Nerve gear. As she felt her real body slipping away from her for what would be the last time in a very long time, she felt a measure of peace as she sat there in the brightly colored login screen while the Nerve gear made it's routine checks of the five senses.

She sat there in the void, waiting as she watched the timed lock on the logon slowly trickle down, her mind blank from everything but the thought of going back to Aincrad. She saw the timer in front of her go out of focus as it turned slightly fuzzy before suddenly she felt her avatar being built around her as the tactile sensors felt the air flowing over her avatar. Waiting several seconds until she could feel her body completely she took a deep breath of air and let out a slight grin as she opened her eyes, the painful stabbing she felt when she breathed gone, the bone deep burning sensation she could always feel gone.

 _Here_ she was free, from herself, from the pain, from all society expected from her. Permitting herself a slightly manic giggle in her mind as she suddenly took off from the square until she felt the game limit her from going any faster with her current level of skill, so caught up in the joy of being free from her mortal body she almost failed to notice the lack of, well _anybody_. Slowing down from her run until she stopped she looked around herself, noting that aside from the NPC's that were conspicuously stationary that she was the only living thing in the entire square.

The first thought that came to mind was that she was somewhere else on the map than where she expected to spawn, the level 1 area. But when she checked her map she was in the right area, but it was still conspicuously empty. _'It must have been a glitch in the system, I entered the game before the lock down was lifted so I have a several hour head start'_ Satisfied with what looked like a simple glitch she turned and made her way over to the nearest vendor, quickly spending nearly all of her starter Col on several potions and several different tools like a shovel and an axe, things that were always useful as in the Beta they introduced the concept of terrain reality.

With enough effort you could dig a pit or cut down a tree and you got the resources, and if you took those then you could use them as you would in real life. One of the most important features of SAO was that it was as close to reality as you can get. If you had a log and a knife, then you could do anything with them, there were no set crafting recipes but instead as you leveled up the game taught you how to make new things. A metal smith at first would be taught how to hammer metal until they could create the crudest of ingots and a weapon smith could take those ingots and was taught how to heat it and hammer it until it became what you wished it to be, imbuing it with stats as you went along if you so wished.

Quickly placing the last of her Col back into her inventory she slipped out of the store and made her way to the edge of town, there were several exclusive quests that she had always wanted to do but had never had the chance to complete as someone else always got to them before her whenever they were reset in the Beta. Most of them were completely irreverent to how she intended to level her character but she had long learnt that there were no disadvantages to having advantages, those advantages being having a multitude of different weapons and armor that were amazing for this floor and the ability to barter with them for what she wanted from other players.

Once she made her way to the edge of town she saw what was to be her first enemy, a {Raging Boar}. It was _the_ weakest enemy in the game but at this point everything was dangerous to her. Quietly making her way behind the boar, hoping that she could get a sneak critical and oneshot it, she grabbed her sword in its sheath for a second and felt the strange but comforting warmth of a [Sword Skill] flowing down her arm and through her weapon. After letting the power build up to the maximum she drew her weapon and sliced in an arc, cutting through the boars spine and getting stuck in its ribs in a meaty tearing sound as a blue crescent of energy flew from her sword and continued until it had passed all the way through the boar and dug into the ground slightly.

Having used her most powerful [Sword Skill]she had at the moment, she felt the warmth that came with [Sword Skills] turn to ice as the Post-Motion delay for the [Cutting Crescent] started, for six seconds she would be locked out of [Sword Skills] and she would be immobilized for half a second, a very risky situation seeing as a fight could be decided in seconds. Thankfully she knew with certainty that the fight was won as she saw the back end of the boar fall away from the front, the [Cutting Crescent] having torn it in two before it shattered and a reward box appeared before her. Quickly shaking off the odd feeling of ice in her veins that she had grown used to she reached out and tapped the floating accept button, receiving 3 Col and a [Damaged Boar Hide].

Looking at the abysmal stats of the boar hide, she realized that even how you killed the monster affected the drops. This hide was worth nothing and even the NPC merchants wouldn't take it from her, it was worthless and when she took it from her inventory she realized why. The hide was actually in two pieces, a jagged and uneven cut following the edges. _'It even models damage on items?'_ She thought with some incredulity, this was so far beyond what they had shown in the Beta that she was starting to question if it was even the same game.

Shaking her head and closing her menu she flicked over to the equipment screen, she wanted to see if the way durability works had been changed. Flicking over to her [Beginners Sword] she glanced over its stats and looked to the durability section. Gone was the 999/999 HP bar that it previously was and in its place it had been replaced with a silhouette of her sword, showing several sections to the item. It showed the blade, it was currently a bright green that if she looked closely she saw an ever so slight, minuscule really patch of slightly darker green on the blade, flicking her eyes back to the weapon in question she peered down at the 'damaged' section and saw that the sharp edge had a minuscule nick in the edge and when she tapped the orange section of the silhouette another box appeared and gave her a multitude of information.

What had caused the damage? In this case the impact of cutting through the spine and colliding with a rib at an awkward angle. How it affected her weapon? It dropped her damage by 0.07 out of 5.3 and gave the weapon a slight sharpness debuff called [Nicked Edge]. Looking at her weapon for a moment she felt nothing but awe, and as much as she tried to keep her emotional balance she couldn't help but feel some admiration for Kayaba. This was so far beyond detailed that she was beginning to question whether or not it was actually possible to calculate this with millions of people playing at the same time.

Taking one last glance at her menu before she closed it she made a mental note to check her armor, it probably had the same function and she would bet that there was a skill that let you read other peoples items. If she wanted to be a top player she couldn't let everyone know her stats now could she? Standing from where she was crouched next to the long dissipated boar she flicker her map open to orient herself, she didn't know if Kayaba had changed anything else this drastically from the beta, she'd have to keep her eye on that.

Making her way further north towards one of the higher level questing villages, skewering several boars along the way and getting nothing but [Damaged Boar Hide], she really needed a sharper weapon. She arrived in the village, quickly checking to see if anyone else had logged on yet but realizing that there was still seven hours before that would happen, she made her way to the nearest NPC, ready to grind through these quests as fast as she could.

* * *

Read and Review, I love getting feedback and it helps when people can tell me of I've made an error.

These are just some examples that I've come up with off the top of my head, if you have any more leave a review or a PM and tell me about them.  
Sword Skills:

[Cutting Crescent] - A normal swing that fires an arc of energy in the direction of your swing. Cooldown = 7 Seconds

[Linear] - A charging attack that propels you forwards at an amazing speed. Cooldown = 2 Seconds

[Slash] - An augmented slash for extra damage. Cooldown = 5 Second

Player Skills:

[Wood Cutting] - How fast you can cut down trees and the quality of the wood received.

[Cooking] - How fast you can cook something, the chance of burning it, the taste and the chance of special stats.

[Metal Smith] - How long it takes to create metal, the quality of the metal and the chance of special stats.

[Weapon Smith] - How long it takes to craft a weapon, the stats of the weapon and the chance of getting special stats.

[Barter] - How convincing you are at selling and buying things and how much merchants will buy and sell to you at.

[Sneak] - How well you are at going undetected and how good you are at remaining hidden.

[Tracking] - How good you are at detecting and following trails.

[Observant] - How good you are at noticing things and the probability of noticing traps or hidden mobs and players.

[Listening] - How sensitive your hearing is and how far you can hear from.

[Balance] - How well you can keep your balance, this goes well with agility.

[Light Sleeper] - How easy it is for you to wake up if disturbed.

[Heavy Sleeper] How hard it is for you to wake up if disturbed.

[Thief] - How easy it is for you to steal something from an NPC or Player.

[Woodcarver] - How well you can carve wood, the quality of the end product and the chance of special stats.


End file.
